Hey guys,
Recently there have been quite a few questions regarding finding a psychological article that is empirical.
Lets first look at what empirical means. When an article is empirical, the results originate on observation or experience. A good type of article to use when you want to make a comparison between two things.
Now to the fun:
From the library's home page you want to mouse-over "Doing Research" and click on "Databases and Articles" . This is the jumping off point for most online research.
Scroll down on that page and you'll see that we have databases listed by subject area as well as format.
Click on Psychology.
At the top of this page you will see a few different icons, the star for example, represents a database that is recommended by the UCM Library.
Scroll down to the journal PsycINFO. This link will bring you directly to the Advanced Search page which I personally prefer for sifting through journals. It gives you a little more control than the basic search and allows you to search exactly how you want.
Depending on what areas you're searching you can filter by keywords, titles or the author directly.
Lets put in "immigration" -AND- "health" both as title searches, as an example.
Further down, you'll see another list of text cells. If you click on the URL "Browse Methodology" a new window will open and you can select which types of studies you want to search. Click "Empirical study" and "Add to Search" - the window will automatically close.
We can also narrow down the dates of the articles, lets put in 2000 to 2010 for more recent studies.
Now our Advanced Search screen will look like this:
http://library.ucmerced.edu/components/com_mojo/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/untitled.JPG
From the results, we find 23 total results, 19 being journal and 19 being peer reviewed. Personally I like to use peer reviewed articles, and your professors will most likely prefer that too so go ahead and click on that tab.
This screen will allow you to go through and see if anything catches your eye. If you want more or less results you can always go back to the advanced search page and refine the terms you use.
And as always, if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask one of the Library's Roving Reference student assistants!
-Ross
